The illegal immigration of record that suffocates Balearic Islands: “We have 300% more minors than the Canary Islands for population rate”

In 2024 he reached the Balearic Islands almost one patera a day. Almost 6,000 immigrants aboard 348 paters that leave from the coast of Algeria on an illegal migration route that It has multiplied by 12 in the last five years.

The majority of immigrants are young Maghreb men, between 16 and 40 years old, although every time The profile is “more heterogeneous,” Explain Red Cross, which is responsible for performing the first humanitarian attention and delivers first -need articles. The NGO denies that they buy ship tickets for transfer or offer pocket money.

Balearic Iss is usually a place of passage For immigrants of legal age. After being identified and released, they continue their trip in Ferry to Denia, Valencia or Barcelona to continue to France or Belgium, where they meet with family or friends. “They come quite in a hurry to do the paperwork because they know they will be released,” police unions explain. “The traces are taken and what they tell you are pointed out because we have no way to verify who they are, what country are there or if they have a criminal record.”

Each wave of warehouses -sometimes more than 400 people arrive in one day -collapses the foreigner service in the absence of material and human means, which entails that other services are stopped providing to citizens.

Without Cie

Baleares does not have a CIE (Foreigner Internment Center) where to place them provisionally and only has a CATE (Foreigner Temporary Care Center) in Palma, which was built a few years ago after the agents are forced to use the garages of the police stations for Serve immigrants.

As if that were not enough, in Ibiza, which is also responsible for immigrants who arrive in Formentera because there is no National Police, the agents have an improvised and provisional center assigned by Baleària in the old maritime station of the island, «although it does not count With any security measure for police or immigrants, ”denounces Manuel Pavón, spokesman for the Unified Police Union (SUP) in the Balearic Islands.

The massive arrival of pateras He is also putting the Consells in check, the island administrations responsible for the reception of unaccompanied minors. This 2024 all records have been exceeded with the arrival of more than 400 minors that were under the reception of the island institutions: 268 in Mallorca, 101 in Formentera and 48 in Ibiza.

Minors centers are saturatedespecially in Formentera, where the Consell has asked to return to the regional government the foster competences of unaccompanied foreign minors. “Before we had about 10 unaccompanied minors and now there are more than 100, some volumes that Formentera cannot bear,” denounces the island institution.

Almost half of all the pateras that arrived in the Balearic Islands in 2024 entered through Formentera, the least populated island of the archipelago. Without own maritime rescue boat, Without radar sive and with hardly any civil guard agents, Formentera became this 2024 at the favorite entrance door for the mafias of illegal immigration and saw how the arrival of immigrants was quintupled: 2,600 in one year. One for every four inhabitants. The minors who traveled on board were automatically under the tutelage of the Consell as soon as they touch.

2024 everything changed for this island that has become the Spanish territory with a “ratio of minors not accompanied by a higher inhabitant even than the Canary Islands,” says the deputy of Formentera, Llorenç Córdoba, having between eight and nine children not accompanied for every thousand inhabitants.

“It is 300% more than Canary Islands, 160% more than Ceuta, and 2,300% more than the rest of the Balearic Islands,” says Córdoba, who insists that “if a distribution of all those who arrive at the archipelago, we I would touch to attend 4 or 5 ».

Unlike the Canary Islands, which has the regional powers, in the Balearic Islands are the Consells – a kind of island deputations – who take care of the reception of unaccompanied foreign minors. In the case of Formentera, the Balearic Government transferred the competences in 1997 with the idea that children and adolescents at greater risk were not transferred to other islands. “But today the situation is very different,” says Córdoba who understands that returning minors to the Balearic government is a matter of “survival.”

Formentera is currently 104 men in charge, almost ten times more than a year ago. Welcoming these immigrants costs about 20% of the entire insult budget, about nine million euros. “And that is a barbarity,” denounces Córdoba, who states that the central state assume the cost of this “survey situation” by considering that it derives from an illegal immigration problem that the government is not controlling. According to Córdoba, “it is not logical for Sánchez to recognize his responsibility for adults and paters, but he disregards minors.”

In Mallorca, minors are also saturated. “Mallorca has no capacity to assume a single minor,” warns the head of the Mallorcan Institute of Social Affairs (IMAS), Guillermo Sánchezwhich does not rule out resorting to tents provisionally to serve foreign minors.

The lack of spaces has caused an unusual ‘competition’ among the Consells themselves, which try to desperate to get new spaces to serve ‘their minors guardians. Formentera is sending minors to other islands for months, Ibiza has urgently enabled new temporary centers in an old barracks or floors in various municipalities and Mallorca has had to resort to the bishopric.

Nor are professionals to attend them in conditions of dignity. “There are monitors who sign the contract in the morning and renounce in the afternoon,” recognizes the Consell de Ibiza, before the “saturation of social services” for the enormous workload. In fact, the minors prosecutor even warned the risk of overcrowding in the Pitiusa Mayor.

According to regional government data, Balearic Islands hosts eight times more than the reception system is prepared. Given this situation, President Marga Prohens (PP) rules out the distribution of immigrant minors of the Canary Islands, as proposed by the Sánchez government. “It is not a matter of solidarity but of capacity,” defends the regional leader, who blames this increase in pateras from Algeria to the president’s promarrochin turn in government foreign policy.

Algeria maintains its closed border, which prevents the return of immigrants of legal age who arrive in Pateras from Algeria. A route in crescendo that the Minister of Interior, Fernando Grande- Marlaska, denies that he is consolidated. Along the same lines, former president Balea and current president of the Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengol, requested this week a human approach to the immigration crisis, while the Government delegate in the Balearic Islands, Alfonso Rodríguez, proposes as a solution that the firm PP The Sánchez’s Foreign Law. “The laziness of the central government is nothing more than a blackmail from the government to the communities of the PP to approve this law as Sanchez wants it,” replies the deputy of Formentera.

The deficiencies in Formentera

“Meanwhile, the mafias are used to do business, aware of the lack of resources and the absence of controls,” explains Tomás Quesada, spokesman for the Professional Association of the Jucil Civil Guard, emphasizing the precarious situation that Formentera has Without radar sive, or own maritime rescue boat, without National Police and with a portable radar “that has been used since October.” According to Jucil, there is a deficit of 500 agents in the Balearic Islands, since the catalog is already outdated. This precariousness has an impact on the safety of the islands.

Just thirty civil guard agents They serve all the pateras that arrive in Formenterawhere the mafias have begun to use ‘patera taxis’ and increasingly operate with more violence, putting immigrants at risk, citizens and agents when they intercept them. The patterns release the command to avoid being arrested when they are close to the coast. Picaresca reaches surrealist levels like the one that reached Formentera and traveled to Denia. There he stole a boat to return to Algeria and return to Formentera loaded with immigrants.

On the beaches, the felling or sunk cars remain without the government withdrawing them. “It is another competition that the central executive is not complying,” denounces the Consell de Formentera, which has been forced to pay for the transfer of vessels to the landfill or pay a company in the sector to be trailers to Ibiza. At the moment, Formentera has a new mountain “with pateras.”